


every version of yourself tonight

by chainofclovers



Category: Dead To Me (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27307642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: Jen isn't angry about the car wreck.
Relationships: Judy Hale/Jen Harding
Comments: 24
Kudos: 75
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	every version of yourself tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tamoline](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/gifts).



> Many, many thanks to my two incredible betas. First, thank you to Bethchildz, who is such a talented writer and who knows Jen and Judy so well. Your insights and encouragement helped me so, so much. <3 Second, thank you to Bristler, my in-house grammar and characterization queen. <3
> 
> ~~(As soon as the creators are revealed by the Femslash Exchange mods, I'll identify you wonderful people by name!)~~
> 
> Tamoline, it was such a pleasure to write this story for you. I'm so glad it gave me the chance to try my hand at writing these characters, and I hope you enjoy it.
> 
> Story title is a phrase from "Mirrorball" by Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift lyrics in titles--that's just the kind of thing this fandom and this year have done to me, and I'm good with it. :)
> 
> A brief content note: This story takes place shortly after the car accident that ends season 2 of the show, and begins with Jen in the hospital recovering from surgery. As such, prescription painkillers and physical and emotional pain are a not insignificant part of this story. Everyone in the story is safe, but take care in deciding to read if any of the above are triggers for you.

Jen isn’t angry about the car wreck.

She isn’t angry about the shoulder surgery. Her whiplashed neck. Her fucked-up back. The blow to the head. She isn’t angry that she and Judy could have died, leaving Charlie and Henry orphaned by a hit-and-run after losing their father the same way. 

She lies propped up in her hospital bed and relishes her newfound ability to fall asleep as soon as she starts to feel something that isn’t physical. She feels no bitterness, no hot pulses of rage, no angry embers stoked by every interaction with someone who isn’t Judy or Charlie or Henry, and sometimes even them. Jen’s anger normally only needs seconds to erupt, but the car accident was many hours ago. The anger is buried now—or not even buried, but missing, like something she’s misplaced and forgotten she used to need. 

A clock hangs on the wall across from the bed. Every time Jen wakes up in the night, she checks the time. It’s a process: first she has to peer past the murky indoor nighttime air and force the clock into focus, and then she takes special care to check the hour hand and then the minute hand to figure out what time it is. It wouldn’t make a difference if it was midnight or four a.m., but she wants to look anyway. The effort exhausts her and makes her feel like she’s earned the right to fall back asleep.

Jen knows there are probably all sorts of miserable things happening nearby—emergencies, and difficult conversations, and pain that makes you wail. But it’s the middle of the night, and she has a private room, so she’s pretty insulated from everything but the most immediate noise. It’s a strange quiet, threaded with layers of sounds that threaten to prevent sleep but never do. The IV machine and monitors beep on a regular basis, and sometimes there’s a hushed discussion in the hallway outside her room, and a nurse keeps coming in to check Jen’s vitals, murmuring her awake if she’s asleep. Even the bright light from the hallway is like a noise. 

None of the interruptions keep her awake for long, and every time she’s left alone again it’s bliss to fall back into rest. To retreat from the post-surgery throb in her shoulder, the twists of pain in her neck and spine, the painkiller wooziness, the guilt and exhaustion and loneliness. She’s too drugged to fear or remember any nightmares. Falling asleep here is a totally neutral experience. She needs it, after the year she’s had. 

Judy isn’t here. She was here when a nurse brought Jen to this room after surgery, and later she left only long enough to bring the boys to see her, and the three of them stayed with her until it was late enough at night that they needed to figure out how to get the boys settled at home or at Lorna’s. Henry didn’t want to go to Lorna’s even though Lorna was adamant that the boys should stay with her the whole time Jen was in the hospital— _You think it’ll be one night, but what if there are complications?_ He didn’t want to stay alone at home with Charlie, even though Charlie was willing to take care of him and even offered to try to make pancakes—or at the very least DoorDash McDonalds in the morning. Henry wanted Judy. He was very loud about it, and very tender, his tears not manipulative but plainly desperate. 

And so, hours ago—about five hours ago, Jen figures, squinting at the clock—Judy kissed her on the top of her head and left with the boys, and Jen has drifted in and out of sleep ever since. 

Jen misses her, but it’s just as well that she’s gone for now. Judy keeps wanting to talk about what happened. Her hands keep folding themselves into involuntary little fists. “We’re going to figure this out,” she’s promised multiple times, pacing around the hospital room, stopping only to straighten out the blanket over Jen’s legs or readjust her pillows. “We’re going to figure out who did this to you. To us. We’ll get to the bottom of this.” She’s angry on Jen’s behalf and on her own. They’d finally started imagining a future that wasn’t just the frantic coverup of lie after lie. A future that included Charlie with his own car and a family vacation, or maybe some time away for just the two of them, just Jen and this woman whose life was miraculously, life-savingly, irreversibly tied to her own. And if Jen’s stop sign hadn’t slowed them down, they might have escaped the accident, might be that much farther into making that imagined future a reality. Judy has said “I’m so sorry this happened” easily a dozen times in the last day. For once the apology doesn’t make her sound like a martyr or a doormat. The “sorry” is sorrow, not insecurity. Judy knows this isn’t her fault. She’s furious. She wants answers, and her anger is like fuel.

But Jen isn’t angry. She doesn’t have any fuel left.

She doesn’t want to figure it out.

She doesn’t want to find the person who plowed into the new car and fled the scene before she woke up.

She doesn’t want to talk to a police officer again as long as she lives.

She doesn’t want to put her faith in justice—she knows by now that justice doesn’t really exist. 

She just wants to go to sleep.

⁂

The next day the surgeon comes back for a follow-up before she’s cleared for discharge. Dr. Li is likely in his sixties, with salt-and-pepper hair and a mouth that defaults into a curved half-smile. When she met him yesterday he wore blue scrubs, but today he wears an olive green sweater, like this is a social call and not a medical visit.

Dr. Li makes steady, casual conversation while he tests Jen’s range of motion and observes her incision. Jen tries to remember everything he says, since Judy—who’s grabbing a coffee and will hate having missed this—is going to ask. 

“I hear you were driving a new car when it happened,” Dr. Li says when they’re nearly done. “The universe’s big idea of a joke, huh.”

“How’d you know that?” Jen asks, though she isn’t really curious. 

“Oh,” Dr. Li says. “Your, um, partner. I talked to her before and after surgery yesterday. She told me about what happened. She was very upset.”

“Judy,” Jen says, like an idiot who can’t keep up.

“Right. You’re lucky, you know—even if the car was new and this feels like a bad joke. You’ve got a partner who loves you very much.” He grins. “I think she would’ve killed me if anything had gone wrong during surgery, but you can tell her I did excellent work.”

Jen musters a smile. For a second, Dr. Li’s words feel true. And maybe they are true—sort of. Maybe it’s not such a leap from _my person_ to _my partner_. “Yeah,” she says. “Thanks.”

“I know you’ve been through surgery recovery before, but it bears repeating,” Dr. Li says. “Don’t overdo it. Get lots of rest and switch to OTC painkillers when you can, all right?”

Jen’s about to ask how Dr. Li has come to know every detail of her life story—at least, she would if she had more energy—when it occurs to her: he probably saw the scars from her mastectomy and reconstruction during the shoulder surgery. She wonders if Judy saw them at any point yesterday, when she was out of it and needed help with everything from getting to the bathroom to resituating her pillows in bed. She wonders if Judy keeps thinking about the slightly puckered pink lines on her chest now that she’s seen them—if she’s seen them.

When Jen’s finally cleared to go home, Judy tag-teams with Carmen, a nursing assistant, to pack her into a wheelchair like a blanket-wrapped little kid. Carmen wedges a pillow under her arm to absorb shock and protect her shoulder. In the sunlight Jen is vaguely glad she got changed into the clean pajamas Judy brought from home. Now that she’s outdoors the thick slip-proof hospital socks she wears instead of shoes feel strange and puffy on her feet. The nurse helps her into the front seat of Abe’s old car. Judy shuts the passenger door firmly and exchanges a few out-of-earshot words with Carmen, who smiles reassuringly and wheels the wheelchair back inside the hospital. On the way home Judy keeps her mouth shut against her usual nervous chatter and drives at least ten below the speed limit, resolutely ignoring all the cars blaring their horns as they pass her on the left. 

Jen wants to tell her that it’s actually more dangerous to go too slowly, but she wants to sleep even more than she wants to articulate this point. She doesn’t fall asleep on the drive—it’ll be a long time before she’s calm enough in the car to lose consciousness—but she lets her eyes fall half-closed.

“Hey,” Judy says when she pulls into the driveway. 

“Hey,” Jen parrots.

“Before we go inside—um. Something you should know.”

“Oh, god, what,” Jen says. The words are right, but the inflection isn’t, because it’s hard to imagine anything Judy could say actually bothering her. Maybe Charlie tried to make pancakes this morning after all, and the kitchen’s still a wreck. Maybe Henry had night terrors last night, and Judy wants to talk about getting him into therapy. Maybe Judy slept in Jen’s bed last night and spilled wine, staining the mattress crime-scene red.

Judy exhales shakily. “Charlie tried to steal some weed from me—”

“The fuck? That kid—”

“Nope, not the point of the story,” Judy says, and Jen has just enough energy to detect the pathologically cheerful panic that creeps into her voice whenever things are really bad. “He found the letter you wrote me, the one with all the really, really good stuff in it, but a lot of, ah, _information_ too?”

“Jesus, Jude.” Jen supposes she should be upset that Judy left the letter—and her _drugs_ —in a place Charlie could reach them. “So what does he know?”

Judy’s hands still grip the steering wheel. She lets them slide slowly down to her lap before she answers. “He told me what he’d found after we got home from the hospital last night. So we…talked. He knows I’m the reason Ted died. He knows I was driving the car. I told him he could hate me forever if he wants to. I told him how much I love you, and how much I love him and Henry, and that you and I met because I wanted to make amends and that we ended up becoming really important to each other. And then he”—her voice drops to a bare whisper—“started asking all these questions about Steve, and I told him he needed to have the conversation with you, but the letter had so much, Jen, and he knows you”—she mouths the next two words—“killed him. I told him it was self-defense. I told him you were ready to give yourself up to protect the three of us, but that we made it to the other side. I told him you were really brave and that we thought everything was gonna be okay and that we’d gone to buy him a car, and then—” Judy has to stop talking to cry. “Please don’t hate me, Jen,” she says when she has herself together enough to speak again. “I couldn’t put off the conversation till you were home. He needed to talk _right then_.” 

“How’d he seem?”

Judy shrugs. “Honestly, kinda quiet and thoughtful? I told him I was going to talk to you about everything and that he could talk to you anytime and that I was sure you’d reach out to _him_ to talk as soon as you were feeling—”

“Judy.”

Judy heaves a sigh. “So he said okay. And he gave me back the letter.”

“Okay.” Jen glances at Judy, flashes a pained smile. “It’s okay. Really. It’s okay.” She takes a deep breath. Feels it tremble on its way back out. “I didn’t want him to have the burden of knowing what happened, but I think I’m—I think I’m relieved.” Even if Charlie decides to destroy everything, he knows the truth. Or something close to it, anyway. And whatever he decides to do with the information, he wouldn’t be the source of any destruction that might follow. Just a catalyst. Just her son who deserves better than what he got.

⁂

That night, Jen sits up in bed and stares at nothing. She doesn’t have the attention span for reading or even for television, and she’s a little lonely even though she knows she’s only alone because Judy’s supervising Henry’s bedtime rituals. She considers turning out the light, but she doesn’t have the energy to text Judy and ask her to come in even with the light off, and she’s worried she might stay away if she sees that Jen’s bedroom is already dark.

She ponders the decision, toggling between her options over and over from within her little Percocet cloud, when Charlie appears at Jen’s slightly-open bedroom door. He’s made himself scarce all day, barely greeting her when she got home from the hospital before leaving the house to spend his Sunday God knows where.

“Hey,” Jen says. “Wanna come in?”

Charlie dips his head in a nod. He sits gingerly at the edge of the bed. “How’s the shoulder?” he mumbles.

“Could be worse.” 

“Yeah.” He sighs. “Do you feel different now? Like, do you feel like a different person?”

He isn’t talking about the car accident or about the way she feels post-surgery. He isn’t talking about how different everything has been since Ted died, or since she quit working for Lorna, or since Henry developed an emotional attachment to a bird, or since Judy moved in. He’s talking about how it feels to murder someone. How it feels to live the rest of your life knowing you ended a life. 

“Yes,” she says. “I feel different now.” 

“You were protecting us.” There’s a slight lilt at the end of the sentence, like Charlie doesn’t quite want to ask this question but does want Jen to confirm the statement.

Yes and no, Jen thinks. She’s spent weeks reliving Steve’s death, but now she can hardly access the rage she felt that night, the waves of rage cresting and cresting, the bottomless ocean of sadness below. She’s sad right now—she knows she is—but it’s dull. Something’s protecting her from feeling it all the way. “Yeah. It got out of hand.” 

“Why’d you stop hiding it?” 

“Because I didn’t think I could handle it any longer.” She feels a tug where her shoulder is stitched back together and follows the tension to the origin point: her hands stretched before her, pulling handfuls of her comforter into a tight grip. She forces her grip to go slack. “I couldn’t handle only Judy and me knowing. But I never wanted you to find out. I never wanted you to have to carry that burden.”

“You think I can’t handle it?”

“I think you deserve better.” 

“I’ll let you get some sleep,” Charlie says abruptly. He places his hands on his thighs and grunts a little as he stands, the gestures of an older man. “Thanks for trying with the car,” he says when he’s nearly to the door. 

Jen smiles. “That was all Judy.” 

“Well, I talked to her too. She said it was both of you.”

⁂

Later that night, Jen wakes up to Judy sliding into bed next to her. The lamp is still on, but Judy turns it off when she’s settled. “How’re you feeling?” she whispers. 

“Mm,” Jen says from within her cocoon of sleep. She wonders if Judy’s going to ask if it’s okay that she’s here, if she’s going to have to muster actual words, but Judy doesn’t say anything else. She snuggles closer, leaving distance between herself and Jen’s shoulder in its protective sling and very little distance between herself and any other part of her. Jen imagines telling her about the conversation with Charlie, but she falls back to sleep instead.

She wakes up when the Percocet wears off. It’s pitch-dark in the room, and she’s alert for the first time in nearly forty-eight hours. It _hurts_. She thinks of Charlie, and wonders what he’s going to do with an urgency that wasn’t there last evening.

“Do you need more pain meds?” Judy asks.

“Oh,” Jen says. “Did I wake you up?”

“You made a little noise. Sounded like you were in pain,” Judy says. “It’s okay,” she adds quickly. She gets out of bed. “Let me get you your drugs.” 

“Not the Percocet,” Jen says. “Two of those hardcore ibuprofen. Please.” It occurs to her they’ll need to hide the Percocet really, really well. Just in case. 

“Jen. No. It’s too early to switch.”

“I’m sure.” She shifts more weight onto her good shoulder with a grunt. “I’ll tell you why when you’re back.” Even with the amount of pain she’s in, it’s a relief to be able to talk to Judy like a normal person. And tomorrow—whatever Charlie decides to do, she needs to be present for it. 

“Charlie came in and talked to me about the letter,” Jen says once she’s swallowed down the ibuprofen, and Judy’s tucked back into bed next to her. The _letter_. It’s such an insufficient metonymy, the way the word has become a stand-in for an act of murder. “He asked me if I feel like a different person, you know, having done what I did.”

“Do you?” Judy asks, and Jen wonders if it’s strange that she doesn’t know.

“I feel different,” Jen says. “But I also—I’ve kept being me, I think, but even before what happened so much had changed.” She’s quiet for a long moment, weighing the value of continuing. “If there was ever a moment I became a different person, it was when I lost my mom.” 

Judy presses her leg against Jen’s. It’s warm and solid and makes up—not all the way, but a little—for how much Jen wants to be able to wrap her arms around Judy right now. 

“That letter is the most valuable thing I have,” Judy says.

“Yeah, you have it on record there’s something I love more than wine.”

“No.” Judy’s voice is sober and serious and soft. “You made me a mom with that letter. I mean—sort of—”

“No, not sort of. I did.” 

“I always assumed I’d find a partner and raise a family, and I hoped it’d be everything—everything I didn’t have. You know?”

“I know.” 

“And maybe it didn’t happen the way I used to imagine when I was younger, or even, God, not that much younger, even, like, _last year with Steve_ , and it just didn’t happen and didn’t happen and then you gave me everything.” 

Jen coughs to buy herself time. It hurts. “When did you know you were bi?” she asks. The question is abrupt, especially since Jen is pretty sure she’s always known this immutable fact about Judy and assumes Judy has always known this fact about herself, too. She wants to know for sure that Judy has always been certain, that that’s how it works—you just know. 

“Oh, um,” Judy says. “Forever, I think? Like, I remember in fifth grade my little friends were all talking about their crushes on the sixth grade boys, you know, real older men, but literally the only person I could think about was my teacher, Ms. Chambers. She smelled amazing, and she had the kindest eyes. We all loved her, but I, um, really loved her. But then I got to sixth grade, and there was Mr. Sand, and he was amazing too.”

“So gender doesn't matter to you.” Jen hopes Judy hears it as a question.

Judy is quiet for a few seconds. “No, I wouldn’t say that. Gender matters. Gender matters a lot. Being with a woman is totally different. But for me gender's always been a secondary consideration to the person just having their shit together.” 

Jen's heart sinks. She doesn’t say anything about the memories she's buried, the longing she used to feel at sleepovers, at school. The women she's appreciated aesthetically, like aesthetics weren't sexual. She doesn’t try to say out loud for the first time that she thinks there’s a chance she’s bisexual. That she’s admonished herself so many times for even asking herself the question, has assured herself that it would be more obvious if it were really true. She’s run through the thought process so many times that the dismissal of the question has started to feel like the answer. 

And what's the point? She doesn't have her shit together. Not like Michelle did. (She focuses very hard on not thinking about Steve.)

Judy has criteria, and Jen can't pass the first, most basic test. 

“Cool,” Jen says. “Very enlightened.” She cringes, afraid it sounds like she’s making fun.

“Ha, ha,” Judy says. “Bisexuality was a difficult concept for Steve. He called it my ‘gay thoughts,’ like I wasn't bisexual when I was with him. And one time we were out and really drunk, and a girl flirted with me, and on the way home he said that when we had a kid I needed to rein that part of myself in, because our kid deserved a normal family.”

“God,” Jen says. “That asshole. Our kids don't have a normal family and look at them.”

“Thriving,” Judy says wryly.

⁂

The pain reaches through the gentler painkiller even after she’s sure it’s had enough time to kick in. The new tenderness in her shoulder, the fury in her neck, the tired old misery in her lower back. Sleep doesn’t come easily. After the conversation ends Judy falls asleep, and Jen lies awake listening to her breathe. She thinks about how she really needs to find a job and how she really needs to get over the mysterious disappointment she feels now that she has confirmation that Judy sees their partnership as an unconventional (read: platonic) version of what she used to imagine for herself. She thinks of Dr. Li, who operated on her shoulder under the assumption he was putting her back together not only for herself but for a partner. She lets it sink in more deeply than it could in the hazy moment—she wants to live in the world of his impressions. Her luck at being the one to receive Judy’s love. She thinks about how gender matters to Judy, and to her, and how there isn’t anyone else in the world who’s ever fit better in her life. She thinks about how she really needs to remember to do a good job when physical therapy starts next week, and how she really needs to mentally prepare herself for being in prison instead of physical therapy, prison instead of maybe getting to kiss Judy someday, prison instead of working for a living again. Her mind darts wildly from thought to thought. 

It’s a little disappointing—the car accident wasn’t some magical “give no fucks ever again” event. She was just drugged. 

In the morning, she drags herself downstairs just in time to see the kids off for school.

“I’m getting a ride,” Charlie explains when she asks him why he didn’t leave when Judy and Henry did. 

“Okay,” Jen says. She tries to keep the fear from entering her voice. It’s an unfair fear. Whatever Charlie decides to do, it’s her fault he has a decision to make in the first place. She’s the one who wrote her feelings down, and she’s found out the hard way that one fleeting act of goodness can’t mend any wrongs.

“Mom. Hey, Mom.” 

Jen snaps back to attention. 

“I’m not gonna tell anyone,” Charlie says. “Fuck the pigs.” 

“Charlie.” 

“You tried, didn’t you? You already tried to turn yourself in.”

Jen nods. She swallows the lump forming in her throat. On top of everything else, she can’t give Charlie the burden of witnessing the magnitude of her relief. 

Charlie’s lips twist like he’s fighting a smile—or not a smile, exactly, but a wave of emotion he isn’t ready to process, much less share. “You’re a good mom,” he says. It sounds like he resents every word as it escapes his mouth, but she knows he means it. “You were trying to help us. You did what seemed right.” 

A car horn sounds outside, and Charlie rushes out of the house.

Jen is still crying when Judy gets back from the school run. 

“Oh,” Judy says gently. She stands on Jen’s uninjured side at the kitchen counter and puts a hand on Jen’s upper arm. “Babe.” 

“I didn’t want to make my teenage son complicit in a crime cover-up, but—he’s going to do it. He’s not gonna turn me in.”

“Wow.”

“I know. I don’t deserve it.” 

“You already turned yourself in,” Judy reminds her. 

“You’re not the first person to point that out today.”

“I held some heavy stuff when I was a kid, too,” Judy says. She laughs nervously. “And look at how great I turned out!”

“You turned out _really_ great,” says Jen.

“So will Charlie. And we’ll figure everything else out together, okay? We’ll figure out who hit us, and—”

“Judy.” Jen’s voice is firm. “I don’t want to know.” 

“You don’t?”

“I want to be done.” She’s said this kind of thing before. She and Judy have talked so many times about moving on—have dared to hope it might happen—and those conversations have been her way of begging the universe to free her from the game of dominoes it’s made out of her life. “We actually could be this time.”

Judy nods slowly. “Watching you hurt is the worst thing,” she says. “It makes me want answers, if not all-out revenge.”

“We got a pass, now they get a pass,” Jen says. “We’re okay, and we don’t need to punish anyone. All right?”

“All right.”

“You promise?”

“Yeah. I promise. We’re done.” Judy’s whole face resolves into a smile. “Oh!” she says. “By the way. I should mention—you have your shit together. At least in my book.” She looks a little sheepish. “I woke up with a start this morning because I realized that point could’ve used a touch more clarification.” 

“Oh,” Jen says, still hoarse with tears. “I’m pretty sure I don’t.” She sniffles. “I wish I did, though.” 

She’ll have to find more words eventually, but she hopes it’s enough for now to express that wish. To say she wants to be worthy.

Judy manages, somehow, to smile even wider. “It’s okay. You’re everything on my list. I mean, you’re even the mother of my children.” 

Later, Jen won’t be able to remember who kissed who first. It doesn’t matter—it happens, bold and bright. It isn’t a distraction from the pain, nor is it a remedy: the kiss is something better, something separate and delicious and entirely theirs. It exists outside the sequence of dominoes that fall and fall; it’s something they make for themselves. She kisses Judy, or Judy kisses her. She doesn’t need to know. 


End file.
